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The Team
Carter
Carter Blake
Played By: Thomas Jane
"I'm not out to change the world, like the doc. I'm not out to wreck it either."
A former smuggler who works as a shark wrangler.
- Action Hero: Nautical version.
- Book Dumb: Describes himself as "poor dumb Carter," but clearly knows his stuff when it comes to being underwater, and specifically dealing with sharks. Also skilled with improvised explosives.
- Dark and Troubled Past: He was a smuggler, currently on parole.
- Great White Hunter: Gives off the vibe as the facilities shark wrangler, obtaining wild sharks for the experimental sharks to eat, tranquilizing them for tests, and recapturing them when they escape.
- The Hero: Downplayed. Definitely the film's male lead, comes up with the plan to kill the last shark, but Preacher is the one to actually execute it. Notably, Carter kills none of the sharks himself.
- Ignored Expert: He tries to convince Susan that bringing in the sharks ahead of schedule is a terrifically bad idea.
- Nerves of Steel: Is the only one who willingly goes into the water with the sharks repeatedly, lacking the primal fear others have for them.
- Not So Stoic: Has a dry, wry sense of humor, but nothing much gets to him. Until Susan reveals exactly what's going on, at which point he gets pissed.
- Take My Hand!: To Janice when he's dangling over her by a ladder. They can't quite reach.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Susan. And boy does it stay unresolved...
- What the Hell, Hero?: He gives a much-deserved one to Susan.Carter: How much dynamite do you have to set off in your ears before your head clears?Susan: You wouldn't understand.Carter: I wouldn't, huh? Dumb old Carter wouldn't understand that you used us? That you used me? Someone on the water who wouldn't make waves. Someone who wouldn't ask too many questions...because he had something to lose.Susan: You don't see what we've done here.Carter: No, what you've done is taken God's oldest killing machine and given it will and desire. What you've done is knocked us all the way to the bottom of the goddamn food chain. It's not a great leap forward in my book.Susan: The people we'll save....Carter: Jim? Brenda? Us?
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Averted. He's the most knowledgeable, capable and expierenced person in the movie on dealing with sharks and ends up the only survivor of the cast besides Preacher.
Susan
Dr. Susan McAlester
Played By: Saffron Burrows
"You wait your whole life for a single moment...and then one day, it's tomorrow."
The head scientist in charge at Aquatica.
- All for Nothing: Not happy that all her hard work was ruined.
- The Caretaker: She took care of her Alzheimer's-afflicted and beloved father.
- Fatal Flaw: Her desire for a cure to Alzheimer's Disease lead to her cutting corners (The illegal gene therapy she did just a fraction of what she did) and so close to the surface she runs off to get the data to show it was a success. Also she tries to brush off everything that's happened on the sinking Aquatica as necessary to save millions, something Carter is not happy to hear.
- For Science!: Averted; Susan's desperation to find the cure for Alzheimer's stems from personal reasons, not scientific altruism.
- Freudian Excuse: Her desire for a cure can be traced back to her father dying from an Alzheimers's-afflicted dementia and begging for her late father to the very end, despite being told otherwise.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: The final shark rips her in half before devouring her remains.
- It's All About Me: While her reasons are justified and reasonable, there's no denying that it's really selfish.
- Ms. Fanservice: One of the funniest examples ever, where she strips down to her bra and panties to use her wetsuit to protect her from electroshock. Also obtained the only wetsuit in the film to zip in the front, allowing her show some cleavage.
- My God, What Have I Done?: She has this reaction when everything blows up in her face, especially when she is forced to destroy her research, rendering all the time, resources, and lost lives All for Nothing.
- The Needs of the Many: She tries to justify the rushed production of the cure by pointing out that it'll save a potentially uncountable number of people. Carter deconstructs this by pointing out this mindset got blood on her hands when the sharks broke out.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: She says this almost word-for-word when trying to save Jim Whitlock.
- Stupid Sacrifice: Instead of just cutting her hand and dripping blood in the water to attract the shark (which would work in real life owing to sharks Super-Senses ) she cuts her hand and jumps in from a point where there was no guaranteed way of getting back out. On the other hand, after having her works reduced All for Nothing and in grief with it, there is a possibility that she just wanted to end her life at that moment.
- That being said, the shark in question was super-intelligent. It's just as likely that without a body in the water, the shark could have realized it was a red herring and kept barreling for the exit.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Carter.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She illegally experimented on the sharks, she rushed the experiment and ignored all the tell-tale signs that something bad was about to happen, so she could cure alzheimer's.
Janice
Janice Higgins
Played By: Jacqueline McKenzie
"Beneath its glassy surface...a world of gliding monsters."
- Broken Bird: She's notably more broken than the other survivors due to Jim's death.
- Dragged Off to Hell: One of the sharks drags her underwater despite the futile rescue attempts of the others.
- May–December Romance: With Jim Whitlock, who's twice her age.
- Nice Girl: Seems to have a very pleasant and friendly personality. After Jim's death she Took a Level in Jerkass, especially towards Susan after she reveals she's the reason for the sharks' increased intelligence and sent the whole situation straight to hell.
Scoggins
Tom Scoggins
Played By: Michael Rapaport
"Did someone order the fish?"
- Deadpan Snarker: Talks back constantly, most often about how yes, he does in fact know how to do his job.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: One of the sharks bites him across the waist, ripping him in half.
- Lovable Coward: The most terrified of the sharks, requiring the most motivation to keep moving.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Carter; they toss jabs at each other, but they're still pals.
Jim
Dr. Jim Whitlock
Played By: Stellan Skarsgård
"Sharks are the oldest creatures on the planet...from a time when the world was just flesh and teeth."
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer:Janice: That's Dr. Jim Whitlock. He's the most brilliant person here.
Franklin: He's pissing in the wind. How brilliant can he be? - A God Am I: Subtly, but creepily there.Franklin: What in God's creation...?Jim: Oh, not His. Ours.
- May–December Romance: With Janice, who's half his age.
- Never Found the Body: Averted. Carter does find his corpse, and it scares the crap out of him.
- The Stoic: He's fairly emotionless and detached.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: His arm is ripped off by a massive shark, gets heli-lifted in the middle of a violent storm only to fall into the water. Then one of the sharks grabs his stretcher and rams him headfirst into the glass window of his lab. Finally, he either bled to death, or drown once his oxygen supply to his mask ran out as he's clearly still alive after getting smashed into the glass.
Franklin
Russell Franklin
Played By: Samuel L. Jackson
- Black Dude Dies First: Subverted; he's the fifth to die behind two helicopter pilots, Brenda and Jim Whitlock.
- Dark Secret: The exact nature of his 'heroic' survival of an avalanche eventually comes to light. The pressure of the situation got to him and his fellow survivors; they turned on each other.
- Eaten Alive: By one of the sharks in the middle of his Rousing Speech.
- Honest Corporate Executive: Carter has a slight dislike for him and considers him a 'rich suit'; while he's right that Franklin has a few dark secrets, none of those are related to his work and he's generally a Reasonable Authority Figure.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: The Gen-1 leaps out of the water and snatches him right in the middle of his Rousing Speech.
- Large Ham: Particularly when he gives his Rousing Speech.
- Rousing Speech: Gives one about pulling together and finding a way out. As he begins to outline a plan for exactly that, he's eaten by one of the sharks.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: In the middle of his Rousing Speech.
- Too Dumb to Live: Giving his Rousing Speech next to an open pool ''he was warned to step away from.'
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Has prior experience with survival situations. Would have come in handy, if he didn't get eaten.
Other Crew
Preacher
Sherman "Preacher" Dudley
Played By: LL Cool J
"Brothers never make it out of situations like this. Not ever!"
The cook of the crew.
- Black Dude Dies First: He inverts this trope by being able to defend himself from the sharks while the other crew members get decimated by the sharks, being one of the only two survivors of the movie.
- Chef of Iron: The cook of the crew and he manages to successfully fight off against the sharks.
- Deadpan Snarker: To everyone up to and including God.
- Eye Poke: This is how Preacher survives being grabbed by one of the sharks. The behemoth is dragging him through the water in her huge jaws, and he grabs his cross necklace and starts to stab her with it. She lets him go when he damages her eye.
- Plucky Comic Relief: He's the only comedic character in the movie.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "You ate my bird."
- Took a Level in Badass: Kills two sharks while giving a righteous middle finger to Black Dude Dies First.
- Tritagonist: Preacher is separated from the other survivors for much of the film, having his own little journey and an encounter with one of the sharks.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When he realizes he just might die in his own oven.
Brenda
Brenda Kerns
Played By: Aida Turturro
- Kill It with Fire: She gets killed due to being caught in the fiery helicopter explosion.
- Mauve Shirt: She has very little in the way of both screen time and characterization.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Her early death means that the base is cut off from any form of communication forcing the survivors to get out on their own.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Doesn't do much beyond getting killed in the helicopter crash, other than her love for outdated music.
Antagonists
The Sharks
The Sharks
The three antagonists of the film.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: While they have no problems eating smaller sharks of different breeds such as a Tiger shark, none of them ever attack each other. Justified as they each have enough intelligence to realize the humans are their captors and they each want to kill them and escape to the open sea, which will be much easier if they all work together.
- Big Bad: Gen 2, the biggest and strongest of the sharks, the leader, and the last to be killed.
- Fatal Flaw: Despite their increased intelligence, their basic shark instincts can still be exploited, such as by making them smell blood.
- It Can Think: Justified as the experiments made them smarter.
- More Deadly Than the Male: Gen 2 is the most dangerous. While her size means she cannot slink into the hallways like the Gen 1 sharks, her strength and intelligence virtually guarantees an insta-kill whenever the humans face her directly.
- Mutants: They were genetically altered by the experiments.
- No Name Given: The two smaller males are only identified as each forming one half of the Gen 1, with no individual identities being given to them.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: They want to kill the humans who experimented on them.
- Threatening Shark: Mutant Mako sharks.
- Tragic Monster: They were normal Mako sharks who were captured and altered by humans. Now they are trying to kill their captors and escape their confinement.
